The Mieczyslaw Correspondence
by RogueJacksonators
Summary: The various times Stiles told the members of the pack his real name. [Contains spoilers for 6x08]


_"I have a son. His name is Mieczyslaw Stilinski. But we call him Stiles."_

* * *

Four-year-old Stiles leaps off the couch when the doorbell rings.

"Scott's here!" he yells into the house as he scampers to the door. There, he bounces on the balls of his feet until his mother emerges from the kitchen to open the door.

On the other side of the threshold is a young woman with olive skin and curly dark hair, dressed in nurse scrubs. "Thanks for doing this," she says, releasing her hands from her son's shoulders. The boy runs into the house, promptly colliding with Stiles.

"It's no problem, Melissa," Claudia Stilinski explains. "Stiles has been wanting Scott over for ages."

"Alright, I'll see you later then. Bye boys!" she calls into the house.

"Bye, mommy!" young Scott replies, displaying his crooked but sweet smile. His call is chorused with Stiles' "Bye bye, Mrs McCall!"

Claudia stands at the door until Melissa has pulled out of the driveway, closes the door and turns around. The two boys are sprawled on the couch, Scott pulling picture books out of his bag. They look up when she clears her throat.

"Do you boys want to go to Stiles' room?" she asks. "Then Stiles you can show Scott your books as well."

"Yeah okay! Come Scott!" Stiles exclaims, reaching over to help his friend shove his books back into his backpack before dragging Scott by the hand towards the stairs.

"I'll be down here okay little mischief?" Claudia calls after them.

"Okay mum!" Stiles yells, not looking back as he and Scott round the top of the stairs.

They sit on the ground next to Stiles' bed, books spread out between them, when Scott pops the question. "What's 'mischief'?"

"That's what my mom calls me, because it sounds like my name."

"What? It doesn't sound like 'Stiles'."

"No, my name is _Mieczyslaw_ , but it's also Stiles," he explains.

"My...chis-law?" Scott tries.

" _Me_ - _shi_ - _slof_ ," Stiles supplies.

" _Michihslof,"_ Scott attempts again, grinning when it sounds closer to how Stiles says it. " _Mishihslof"_.

It's safe to say their book lie forgotten for a while.

* * *

"Hi, I'm Stiles. Stiles Stilinski. Do you want to join me and Scott's group for the music project?"

The girl with the red, no, strawberry blonde hair looks him up and down. "Your name is not really _Stiles Stilinski_ , is it?" she finally asks.

* * *

"Well no, it's _Mieczyslaw_ ," Stiles tells her. "But you can call me Stiles because that's easier to say."

"Okay. I already joined another group."

His heart sinks. But he grins at her anyway. "Oh, okay then. Maybe next time?"

"Hmm...maybe." She pushes the corners of her mouth up, giving him a sickeningly sweet smile, then turns and flounces over to her friends.

Stiles sighs as he watches her. So much for his dream team.

"Come on Stiles. I'll ask Tim if he has a group," Scott says from somewhere behind him, tugging at his elbow.

"No one will be as smart as Lydia," he moans.

"You still have six more years to make her fall in love with you."

"Yeah, this delays things a little bit but plan is still in motion."

* * *

This is, surprisingly, not awkward at all.

He and Scott were sharing pizza at the outlook in the preserve when Allison called. Her parents dropped her off at Lydia's place but Lydia apparently forgot their plans and had another guy over, so Allison snuck out. She just needs to be back at Lydia's place before 10.

He was honestly a little annoyed that she was interrupting his bro-time with Scott, but Stiles gets it. Really, he does. Allison is good for Scott, and Scott really likes her, but they have to sneak around. Stiles isn't going to take away their rare opportunity to hang out when he can see Scott again tomorrow.

Thankfully, Allison and Scott are both considerate of him and it turns into a trio hangout which eventually devolves into truth or dare. Not that there is that much they can do in a forest.

Scott dares Allison to chug half a bottle of seven-up and in return she dares him to strip naked and scale a tree. Then Scott makes her take her sneakers off and stick her feet into a patch of soft mud.

"Ugh, I'm ignoring you for five minute," she tells Scott and she wipes her feet off after. Stiles knows she's joking though, because Allison watches Scott put his pack of tissues away before she turns on _him_. "So Stiles, truth or dare."

"I definitely do not plan to get naked, so truth," he says.

Allison doesn't pout as if she had an insanely embarrassing dare she won't get to use, but she does think hard. "What...is your real name?" she finally asks.

He types it out on his phone and holds it up for her to read. "I dare you to try pronouncing it."

"You didn't even ask me 'Truth or Dare'," she says flatly.

Scott nudges her arm. "Try it."

Allison takes a moment to study the word. "Myc-zy-slaw?"

She earns a badly hidden snort from Scott, who mutters "This is why we call him Stiles."

Stiles puts his phone away. " _Mieczyslaw_ ," he corrects her.

She says it once, trying the pronunciation, and he never hears her say it again.

* * *

Today he's studying with Lydia instead of Malia.

He feels like there's a _for a change_ at the end of that sentence and something odd churns in his stomach. Lydia isn't a change. Lydia is a _constant_.

A constant which he hasn't seen in a while.

She's here now though, next to him. They are in her room, sprawled on her bed. They have a chemistry test coming up and Malia isn't in that class, so she's off with Derek and Scott, doing wolfy things while he's here. With Lydia.

Actually, they are not studying _right now_. They were, until the name Ally appeared in a practice question and they both had to take a break.

For the last eight minutes it's been silence interspersed with "I miss her"s and "it wasn't your fault" and "you okay?"s. Neither of them cry, but some part of him thinks, for himself at least, he's run out of tears to shed.

"You know," Lydia's voice breaks the silence. "When I was down there, he - it..."

She coughs. Bringing up the Nogitsune is still hard.

"It made me think you were dying."

He doesn't know what to say, so he sits up and looks at her, giving his undivided attention.

Lydia wriggles her body until she is next to him, then slowly pushes herself into a sitting position.

"It made me want to scream. For you."

"That's definitely not how I imagined anyone screaming my name," he says, but his voice comes out raspy. A rough whisper.

If Lydia has any reaction to his attempt at a joke, she doesn't show it. Instead, she continues, "I tried to convince myself I couldn't scream for you because I didn't know your name." She swallows. "Your real name."

He looks down to find that somehow he's taken her hand in his, his thumb rubbing small circles over the back of her hand. He gives her a light squeeze.

"Lydia," he asks softly. "Do you want to know my real name?"

She tilts her head up from where she was staring at the bedspread. Her green eyes meet his. "I should know," she says. "You told me. I remember you trying to tell me, but I didn't catch it."

His lips twitch at the memory. 12-year-old Stiles would have fainted if he could see five years into the future.

he doesn't know why he leans in, but he does, slowly, until his lips are next to her ear, and he can smell her lavender shampoo, and whispers, " _Mieczyslaw_."

" _Mieczyslaw,"_ she murmurs, getting it right.

He's surprised anyone nailed the pronunciation on their first try, but he shouldn't be. It's Lydia. Even when he thinks he knows a lot about her, she still has something up her sleeve.

" _Mieczyslaw Stilinski_ ," she whispers again. Her voice is soft but it fills the room.

Something booms in his chest when he hears his name leave her lips but he pushes it down and jokingly compares his name to that of notable scientists.

* * *

The subject Malia hates the most after math is literature, then economics. Stiles doesn't take the former class with her, but Scott does, and when Malia ignores his reminders to write her essay, Scott texts Stiles instead.

 _if ure studying with malia later make sure she does her lit essay. i marked her chapter for her in her bk._

Sure enough, there's a yellow post-it square sticking out of Malia's copy of Remains of the Day with the word range and due date written in Scott's handwriting. It's Saturday, and the essay is due on Monday, the same day as their econs case study. Luckily he already made her finish _that_.

After four long hours (inclusive of a lunch break and a make out session), he finally coaxes an outline from the werecoyote. Thank god it's only an 800-1200 word essay. He would kill himself if Malia had to think of any more discussion points, provided she didn't kill him first.

"How does this become an essay?" Malia asks, frowning at the planning paper in front of her.

"You have to rewrite all the points in full sentences, and arrange your subpoints and examples to support the main arguments. Which we underlined," Stiles explains.

When Malia continues frowning, he holds a finger up, signalling for her to wait. He gets off the bed and crawls under his desk. "I've got some old files here that might have...aha!"

He crawls back out with a half-full ring binder in one hand. He holds it up triumphantly and announces, "old notes!"

He flips through it and finds two old essays where he had attached his outline to the back. Grabbing his coloured highlighters, he starts boxing the different parts of his paragraphs in different colours, highlighting the corresponding points in his outline with the relevant colours.

"It's like putting everything that is here - " he motions to Malia's outline, "together, but in full sentences. And you arrange the points to make sense together. That makes a paragraph. The most basic structure is the write your main point first." He points to a scribble on the planning paper (which he surrounding with asterisks to highlight it's importance), then points to where the same point has been rewritten, at the start of a paragraph.

Malia takes the essay from him, and he think maybe she's getting it. Then she places it down on the bed and points to a line at the top left of the paper.

"That's your name?" she asks. "What's a meek-zis-law?"

" _Mieczyslaw_ ," he corrects. "Back to your essay - "

"No wonder everyone says 'Stiles'," the coyote says, placing the papers aside. "'Stiles' is easier to say."

"Yeah, that is true," he mumbles. Then clears his throat. "So, you know what to do for your essay?"

"Yep," she answers, pecking him on the cheek before she sits up and starts shoving the papers into her bag.

He catches her arm as she gets up to leave. "Where're you going?"

"Home," she says, as if there's nothing wrong with the fact that her work is undone. "It's almost time to catch rabbits."

She makes to leave his room again and he pulls her back. "Wait - no, human, remember? Not coyote, human. We don't hunt rabbits, not like that..."

* * *

"So what's a criminal's tremor?"

Stiles rolls his eyes and snatches the (stolen) papers out of Liam's hand.

"Don't you have class?" he asks instead of answering the question.

"I could ask you the same thing," Liam replies coolly.

Stiles narrows his eyes. Liam did kinda save Scott's life a few months ago, and he'll always be grateful for that. But sometimes he really wonders why Scott had to bite _him_ out of all people.

"Free period," he mutters.

"History was boring," Liam says brightly.

"Evidently, since you were listening to us instead of your teacher."

The beta snorts. "I have Vaughn this semester," he says, referring to the old lady infamous for talking people to sleep. Stiles can't argue with that.

They fall silent as they drive to the address Theo Raeken supposedly resides at. Stiles head is concurrently thinking about the possible shady behaviour he might find at the Raeken residence and how it might not be so bad to have Liam hanging around all the time.

"Your name is _myec-zis-law_?" the younger boy suddenly asks.

Stiles glances at him out of the side of his eye. The kid had his driver's license in his hand.

"It's _Mieczyslaw_ ," he answers. "And put that back."

Liam huffs, but returns the card to the small compartment beneath the radio.

* * *

 _"Hey Lydia, what do you call me when I walk in slow motion?"_

 _"'If you don't get to the car fast enough I'm gonna drive off and leave you here?'"_

 _"Mieczy-sloth."_

 _"..."_

 _"Oh come on Lyds wait up!"_


End file.
